Chapter 10
Ten
Kieran
Evie slides her hand along the inside of my wrist where my armor ends, finding the seam without failure. She bats her blue eyes wide without missing a step.
“What do you want to do now?” she purrs.
I want to shake her off, send her in the opposite direction, and turn tail to check on the girl. Morgan.
I tell myself it’s guilt that makes me want to check on her. Guilt over what Evie did, what I allowed to happen. But the twist in my chest when I think of her bloodied and broken—that’s something else entirely.
Something dangerous.
The servers whispered her name to me like a prayer I hadn’t been devout enough to earn. Morgan Whyte, the redheaded survivor of destroyed Fallkirk. The girl who should be wearing student robes instead of servant rags. The girl I helped put in chains.
Instead, I turn off the part of my brain tied to my empathy and leave her behind. I fix Evie with a smile and do what I always do when she asks the question.
I keep her at arm’s length.
Her behavior in the dragon aerie is expected. If I tell her off, if I lash out at her for the way she treats others, she’ll suspect me.
Keeping the nebulous vision of the greater picture in mind, I grin at her, watching color flush the apples of Evie’s cheeks.
“I have a few things in mind,” she says when I’m too quiet for her liking. “If you have a little bit of time, I’d love to show you how grateful I am for your good deeds.”
Her hand slips higher.
“Good deeds?”
“Fallkirk. Tristan told me how you handled things there. So thorough, so… decisive.”
My back stiffens. Who knows what my cousin told Evie about last week.
“Seems the hero deserves a little bit more fanfare than he’s been awarded. I’d be happy to show you how great warriors should be celebrated.”
Swallowing a groan, I take a step back, sliding my hands into my pockets. I’m saved from having to answer her by the arrival of a messenger.
Black livery keeps the servants professional and discreet. They’re unseen until they want to be.
This fellow with slicked back hair clears his throat before holding out a hand for me. “A letter for you, sir.”
“Already?” Evie asks, half curse, half plea.
She wants me to ignore it but my blood goes sluggish the second I recognize the tiny scrawl on the front of the envelope.
The man’s thumb obscures the wax crest of our house. I don’t need it to understand exactly what’s written inside the letter.
“He’s been here a grand total of five minutes,” Evie argues.
Like it’s her place to do so.
I push the hair out of my eyes. “Sorry, darling. Duty calls.”
The server bows low and holds out the envelope for me to take, his arms straight, before disappearing into the bowels of the castle the moment the paper lifts away from his skin.
Evie’s indecipherable eyes take my measure. “You’re a busy man.”
My smile doesn’t touch my eyes. Apologizing, I make excuses to Evie and take off down the stairs, into the heart of DragonSpear.
A letter, already.
My heart constricts, stomach flipping like I’m readying for the next battle on the heels of the last. It has apparently taken Roman Ryson no time to script a message expressing his disappointment in me. I’d bet everything I have I’m right.
I crumple the letter in my fist and stalk down to my room on the third floor.
The false grin is still pinned in place when I stop in front of my room, pushing my thumb to release the brass lever and pulling the door open. Flames burn my midsection and my stillness breaks when Mozi’s presence fills my mind, awareness expanding.
Uh oh. What’s wrong, Kieran?
A message from my father. I scour my hand through my hair, grabbing the strands and using the bite of pain for clarity.
I check the corners of the room, the hidden places and the armoire near the door, but find nothing out of the ordinary. The mattress bows under my weight once I’m sure I’m alone.
The great curved legs of the wooden platform absorb my drop as I peel open the edges of the letter.
You know better than to let anything he says affect you.
Easy for you to say. You’re a dragon. You don’t get reprimanded by your sire, I reply.
No, but there are others more powerful than me, and they take great delight in crushing me underfoot. Mozi snaps invisible teeth in my mind before retreating.
Leaving me alone with whatever insults my father decided to bestow today.
My father’s usual tiny script is impossible to read and this time, he’s made it even smaller, extending the punishment to my eyes.
“You are my son and the expectations on your shoulders are greater than—” I read.
I groan and flop onto my back, holding the letter above my head. Great beams of sunlight from the wide arched windows let in enough of a glow for me to see motes of fluff from the bedspread dancing in the air. It’s also bright enough to make out the exact flavor of my father’s disappointment.
It’s a familiar taste on my tongue and down in the bowels of my stomach like it’s been written into my organs.
I scan to the bottom paragraph of the first page.
“You know better than to flaunt a survivor within the hallowed halls of the most elite academy in Manifest.” I affect my tone to be more like my father.
“Your failure to properly dispose of the Fallkirk survivor shows a concerning weakness of character. Sentiment has no place in leadership. Tristan understood this—why can’t you? ”
The words slice deeper than any blade. Because he’s not wrong. Sentiment did stay my hand. And now Morgan suffers for it.
Gruff, smoky, a timbre designed to give children nightmares for the rest of their days. It seems like every time he gets a whiff of me caring, he strikes, carving it out of me before the desire hooks in too deep.
Apparently, not killing the woman who tried to defy me by protecting the village children is a sign of weakness. Who would have guessed?
Because it’s important, because I know there will certainly be a reckoning later, I force myself to read the entire thing.
The letter goes on to detail my supposed faults and what it means not only for our part in the war effort but Roman’s reputation. The last and final cherry on top of the written beatdown comes in the form of a sentence lauding Tristan for his efforts to right my mistakes.
“Tristan had to step in to cover for you and it is not his position to do so. His actions show a strength of character…” I trail off in disgust.
My cousin, the golden child with sunshine streaming from his backend, and I am supposed to bend down and get eye level with it.
No thanks.
I roll onto my side and land on both feet, striding to the fireplace. A flick of a button sends the gas spiraling up through the logs, pumped through pipes in the stone walls, and I take great care to strike a match against the mantel. A flame bursts to life.
I toss the match into the logs, waiting for them to catch, and add the letter to the depths of amber.
“Sorry, Dad.” The edges burn and the ink burns bright green before the paper is gobbled. “I’m never going to be Tristan.”
I’ll never be the kind of man Roman Ryson wants me to be no matter how many punishments he brings down on my head.
The fireplace isn’t as quick or efficient as dragon fire but in this case, it does the trick.
The rebellion isn’t just about my father anymore. It’s about every village like Fallkirk, every girl like Morgan who becomes collateral damage in his war for control.
It’s about the fact that I stood there and watched Evie grind someone into the dirt who should have been untouchable.
I refuse to live my life by Roman’s definition of strength. He holds himself to a strict code of rationalized conduct although his moral code has been corrupted somewhere in his life. Unfortunately, he expects everyone else to fold themselves into the same tiny, warped box.
Anyone who doesn’t is considered a traitor.
“Should I expect an entire novel next time?” I tell the flames. “Invent some new insults for next time.”
Ryson won’t care. He cares about very little these days except his own goals for the future and if someone gets in the way of his vision, he crushes them. Even his son.
Even my mother.
When I was thirteen, Ryson took me from my mother and forced me into a proper education. Under his watchful attention. I rebelled exactly once.
I snuck out and went home, back to my mother, prepared to make a stand like a man and choose my own life. Screw my absent father who only cared about me when it benefitted him.
Ryson respected the act, he did. But he’d never let any son of his be a farmer. So he slit my mother’s throat and let the blood spray everything in the room, including me.
“You will either fall in line or you will learn the consequences the difficult way,” he’d said mercilessly. “I trust we won’t have to have this conversation a second time?”
I wrap my fingers into fists and drag my mind back from the dark and terrible memories. It won’t change anything.
I’ve done everything my father asked of me and more from that day on and for one purpose. Vengeance burns my throat and mouth as the last bits of paper flake away into dust.
The walls press in on me and I ready myself for the moment when they crash together. The size is double what the rest of the underclassmen are given but there are four walls, a ceiling and a floor, and the box grows smaller as I watch. Lifeless.
Ryson would say that privilege has its perks but I say nepotism can only get you so far if you aren’t willing to stand on your own laurels. The size of the room is a tribute to him, not to me.
The over-large armoire, the king-sized bed, the adjacent bathroom…
Do I deserve it?
Disgusted, I head back outside, down the curving staircase at the end of the hall with the banister warm beneath my palm.
My life is different. Being intimidated by someone else’s strength is what makes my father weak, not strong. How can you justify getting power by crushing those without and cutting off anyone who may have any?
I head left instead of right.